


Meeting The Messenger

by OldboyJensen



Category: Team Fortress 2
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-10-29
Updated: 2019-10-29
Packaged: 2021-01-06 05:33:56
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,075
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21221402
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/OldboyJensen/pseuds/OldboyJensen
Summary: Newly contracted out to Reliable Excavation Demolition, ranged support class "The Messenger" makes some interesting first impressions on the badlands mercenaries.----Written in 3rd person POV from the perspectives of the canon mercenaries with one main merc perspective per chapter. An introduction to my OC Messenger as well as the backstories and connections between the other characters in this timeline's storyverse. Tags and relevant characters will update with chapter additions.





	Meeting The Messenger

**September 15th 1965**

Sniper had arrived at the **R**eliable **E**xcavation **D**emolition’s “Dustbowl” base in August, and so far he'd made about five appearances to his team outside battle. Aside from the few skirmishes he’d been involved in, he had spent his time either out in the desert hunting or confined to his camper. The mercenaries at were of course provided rations including M.R.E.s and other requisitioned vittles each week. Excluding the can of decaf and a singular banana-bread muffin from a tray someone had left out, Sniper had yet to take advantage of that fact. He simply didn’t need to: not as long as he had a bow and the room to make a fire pit.

He only really stepped foot in there for showering, and even that was conducted at an hour where he was unlikely to come into contact with anyone except one of the engineer’s patrol bots. Logic said that eventually he was at least going to have to get to know his teammate’s faces or maybe voices so he could avoid friendly fire.

Logic, of course, could very kindly bugger the fuck off. Sniper hadn’t been on a team since his early game hunting days. Those were a long time gone now. He had been doing JUST FINE on his own for nearly half a decade now, and only… finances had driven him to take this group assignment in the first place. Get a steady job, dad’d said. Do what you love, mum’d said.

He’d tried to split the difference. It wasn’t quite a question of loving the work so much as satisfaction in knowing he was damn good at what he chose to do. Taking blokes out didn’t send him to nirvana or anything like his dad seemed to think. It was just a task to do, and heaven forbid he take an ounce of pride in the execution. Hopefully at least one of them would be happy with this. His managing to make a career out of what had started with unsteady freelancing, that was. His few months working the American Southwest on probation before being fully hired to work for Redmond Mann had, in the very least, proven to his employers that he would perform well with what they wanted. Those checks had bought him the van where he now sat on his one tiny camp chair and read the local newspaper. Dull stuff, but considering he was zoned out thinking about the neat lizard he’d seen during the last battle, the content didn’t really matter.

Sniper carefully brought his bowl—he really needed to invest in a mug—to his lips and sipped his coffee. His newspaper of course slid off his lap. Just as he bent to get it, a knock sounded at the trailer door.

“Oi, it’s Demoman, d’ye have a minute?”

No. He was very busy trying to not spill coffee all over himself.

Sniper reluctantly placed the bowl down on the counter and went to crack open the door.

“What for?”

Demo couldn’t help but peer around the shut-in teammate in hopes of glimpsing something that could help him prove the man wasn’t, as some of the others had concluded, a robot. He only managed to spot a pile of clean bones and a girly mag before Sniper stepped out and shut the door behind him.

“Och, well, mm, I’ve come to make sure you, an dunnae get me wrong am no sayin’ I think you don’t, the general consensus is that you do, because of course you would, but am jes makin’ sure,” he tried to detect even a shred of emotion from Sniper’s face and was coming up flat, “Am jes makin’ sure you know that we got our new class in yesterday.”

Sniper blinked.

“They cleared the Scout issue up, then?”

Demo blinked, and for a moment neither mercenary said anything. On Demo’s end, he was both confused and glad he’d had the good sense to check up on his…the Sniper? What he’d come to talk about had nothing to do with the “Scout Issue” which was…well. Old news.

“No…well yes, but… a week ago. But, ah. Well, it’s back to being unresolved as of two nights passed. Did ye no see him on the battlefield?”

“Oh, right. I guess that was ours then. In the red.”

Demo opened his mouth then closed it before taking a drink from the bottle at his side. He wiped his mouth with the back of his hand as he answered.

“I mean, tha’s how it works, yeah.”

“Oh. Well. Good, then,” Sniper fiddled with the camper handle, “We got somebody after that, then?”

“Aye. That Miss. Pauling lass dropped her off last afternoon,” he scratched his jaw, thinking out loud, “Well, glad I came by! You should, might, want to meet her before the next skirmish.”

“Ah. I’ll… try to remember t’ do that.”

Another silence. A tumbleweed tumbled by. Sniper watched its progress. He nearly forgot someone else was there and just barely managed to cover up his startled flinch when Demo next spoke.

“I, ah, well I’d say maybe it’d might be best for you to do that soon. Seeing as she’s a ranged class, an there’s only so many, what do you call those? Sniping spots?”

Mitchell M. Mundy’s blood frosted over.

“They. Hired. Another _Sniper_?”

A numbness pulled at the back of his head, and he shoved his hands into his pockets to hide his white knuckles. Questions flashed in jarring neon that throbbed behind his eyes. Was his kill count not high enough? Was this a soft fire?

Demo shifted uncomfortably and looked anywhere but the steely glare of a man who’d never attempted to meet his eyes before.

“Well, uh, yes an no? The lass has your _range_ apparently, but she’s a healer.”

The pounding stopped, and Sniper

“Mate, I’m no doctor, but I’m pretty sure that’s the opposite of the job description.”

Demo blinked in confusion for a second before a big goofy grin spread across his face and he burst into laughter. Sniper stumbled back slightly at the sudden-ness of it all. He flinched a bit more when Demo clapped a hand on his shoulder, still chortling.

“Not with a _rifle_! She’s got some fancy tech gun thingy, custom made, she says. Looks at it like a mum with a fresh bairn. Sweet lass, far as I can tell,” he scratched his chin, thinking out loud, “Et’s a tad funny actually… I’d never heard of this class type being tactically deployed… did say she’s had some basic combat training though.”

Whatever that meant, Sniper thought with a raised eyebrow. If the sheila had never seen an actual firefight before, let alone not being a tactical class, no “basic training” was going to be much help to her or, by extension, anyone else. She’d probably gotten picked for acing some sort of ranged accuracy test or other nonsense. As if being a sharpshooter in some controlled environment could ever prepare anyone for killing in the heat of day.

“You’re saying I should chat up this new…whatever she is, before we run into each other on the same vantage points?”

“Aye, ye’ve got it. I had it figured that at least then you won’t, yanno,” Demo mimed shanking someone with a comedically large knife, “On accident. By the by, the ‘whatever she is’ is called the—” Demo turned at the sound of the base door opening, “och, speak o’ the devil, here’s your opportunity lad.”

His first thought was that her uniform was the brightest red of any of the others aside maybe from Pyro. This meant, of course, that not only was she a greenhorn, but she was also a highly conspicuous target. Of a greenhorn. It was particularly fantastic seeing as she would potentially be close enough to his proximity for the sitting duck syndrome to rub off. The best-case scenario would be for her to draw fire away from him with the contrast. Sniper’s second set of thoughts was that her boot was untied, and she was probably going to trip going down the porch stairs.

Demo cupped his hands around his mouth.

“OI LASS!”

Miss. Target Practice half-jumped half turned, and clearly stepped forward just wrong enough on the lace to fling herself face first into the parking lot. Her hat was knocked off when attempting to turn her fall into a combat roll. She was…vaguely successful.

The Demoman winced with a laugh and strode over. He slid his hands under her armpits and lifted her vertically like one might with a misbehaving cat. She scrabbled to get her footing and brushed herself off when Demo let go.

“Good, then, Sniper, this is The Messenger, Messenger, this is the elusive camper dweller himself. Managed to coax him out just for you.”

Sniper didn’t have time to be mildly offended before he found himself critically sizing this “Messenger” up. He noticed her mole before he noticed her glasses, following the movement of her fingers to push the latter back up the bridge of her nose. It sat, perfectly round, perched at the top of her right cheek. Then it was the glasses, rectangular with somewhat thick frames, before her hand moved to swipe her bangs out of her eyes. He hadn’t met someone with a face that managed to be square and… soft simultaneously. Her body didn’t quite match the strength of that bulldog chin. That set of jowls was not one Sniper was used to on a non-Australian woman, and it was giving him what he hoped were uncanny valley sensations. On top of it all she was so…small. The crest of her hat could _maybe_ hit just above his chin.

But all of this was eclipsed by the greenery. The greenest of greenery, even more immediately obvious than he’d expected. No scars, no flint or cold analysis in the eyes behind her glasses. Despite his deadpan, Sniper was somewhat floored by how truly civilian this supposed mercenary was. His prior analysis of Demo’s assessment had been based mostly in grouchiness. In reality, the only women he’d met or tried to shoot on this battlefield had been more calculating, intimidating, bold, striking, or some combination of attributes than their masculine counterparts. He’d been ready for that. This woman in front of him was not bold in any light. Compared to what he was accustomed to she was positively _meek_. None of that pinning him to a wall with a phonebook and demanding a secret code no one’d told him about, or attempted “medical” dissection, or whacking his shins out with a wrench for walking quietly on accident. No, this was a face and countenance refreshingly void of murderous intent. Nearly sparkling with plain-ness. He hadn’t seen that on anyone outside his parents in years.

He would prefer not to see it here of all places...poor cunt was good as dead.

“I prefer ‘The Sniper,’” he grunted, holding out his gloved hand.

There was a slight pause before “The Messenger” presented hers back. She didn’t meet his gaze directly and seemed to be fixating on something behind his knees. Sniper checked to see if there was anything particularly interesting going on in that direction.

There was dirt. After a moment, Sniper changed his focus back to the woman instead, as riveting as the bare ground was.

He watched with something of a mild fascination as Messenger’s face appeared to go on a journey through at least seven expressions. Her eyebrows and mouth did most of the talking. To what or who exactly, he wasn’t entirely sure. The closest Sniper could figure was that she was trying to get into a deadpan, as that was the, albeit wobbly, final look she settled with on taking his hand. Her grip was surprisingly firm, and on closer inspection the leather of her gloves was more than well broken in. The knuckles were particularly worn down.

Something prickled at the base of his neck as Messenger’s strange eyes found his. She spoke steadily: well measured and professional in tone.

“You look like the kinda fella who’d play the bassoon.”

The same tumbleweed from earlier tumbled by in the opposite direction. Messenger’s face broke out with flushed mortification. Demo coughed, looking toward base.

Sniper’s mouth twitched into a small smile.

“Is barrie sax close enough?”


End file.
